[ NNSquad ] The good old days of common carriage

[Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com>]

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007, Jay Sulzberger wrote:
> The phrase "Net Neutrality" has been bad for our side.  The right
> word is "common carriage".  Under the rule of common carriage,
> when you and I send Net packets over the various pipes between us
> the transport companies must not wiretap and they must not
> whimsically degrade our streams.  Paying for bandwidth is not a
> violation of common carriage.  Wiretapping and arbitrary
> degradation of our packet streams are violations of common
> carriage.

I think people may be reminicing too much about the "good old days."
Back in the day of telephone party-lines, when multiple households shared 
the same telephone line, many of the same issues occurred.  And yes, 
party-lines were still considered "common carriage" and had tariffs, etc.


America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940

"A common concern of Bell companies, independents and rural mutual lines 
alike was teaching party-line etiquette. [...] The companies also tried
to teach customers to avoid occupying the line with long conversations. 
They printed notices, had operators intervene and sent warning letters to
particularly talkative customers.  In some places, companies imposed time 
limits that seemed to help, although it is unclear how strictly operators
enforced such limits. Informal understandings may have done the most to 
minimize the problems of pary-line use. Another Indiana woman recalled 
that telephone conversations ceased if someone broke in to ask for the 
line and then recommenced after the caller had finished."


Party-line services was cheaper and easier to build, especially in rural 
areas. Over the decades people paid more for private line service, and
party lines have mostly disappeared for telephones. But for decades the 
same common carrier sold both types of service.